Workflow Crisis

So, I’m only three pages into Your Cold Felt Heart Issue No. 1. Why? I’m in the midst of a full-blown workflow and art style crisis.

While creating Issue No. 0 I crafted a workflow and art style that involved incorporating my hand drawn characters with backgrounds I created using Adobe Illustrator. The upside to that workflow and art style was the ease of use for creating “true” on perspective backgrounds and three-demensional objects (like cars and trash cans, and other fancy things). The downside to that workflow was that it was slow as molasses, and involved a lot of back and forth between programs to create the final finished page. One of the reasons I went with that workflow and art style was a lack of self-confidence in my ability to draw three-demensional objects exactly on perspective, but honestly these days I wonder if “perfect perspective” really matters.

I’ve been reading a lot of Bill Watterson’s comic strip Calvin and Hobbes lately, and can’t help but notice how little true perspective mattered to Bill. Calvin and Hobbes is an absolutely beautiful comic strip, probably the best since Schulz’s Peanuts, and it’s beautiful without the use of perfectly measured and executed perspective. Now, I don’t think I’ll ever compete with Bill Watterson’s beautiful line work, but I am thinking I might be putting too much emphasis on true perspective.

Although I’m really happy with how Issue No. 0 of Your Cold Felt Heart turned out, I really wanted to improve my turnaround time on creating Issue No. 1. Only being three pages in so far is not the improvement I had in mind; which brings me to my workflow crisis: Do I stay the course, and keep drawing my backgrounds and objects using Adobe Illustrator despite it being a slow and cumbersome process; or do I take the leap and draw the whole thing by hand this time, improving my speed while possibly creating some terrible artwork?